CS14 - Review and Improvement

Purpose

To provide guidance to owners or operators of aquatic facilities on processes and practices to ensure that child safe practices are regularly reviewed and improved.

Description

The owner or operator of an aquatic facility should work to ensure that the policies, procedures and systems which support safeguarding children and young people are monitored, reviewed and continually improved.

Monitoring and review should take place in all stages of development, implementation and delivery of child safety at the aquatic facility.

Management review

A key way of ensuring that continual improvements are monitored and captured is through a structured management review. The owner or operator of an aquatic facility should determine:

• what needs to be monitored and measured;
• the methods for monitoring, measurement, analysis and evaluation needed to ensure valid results;
• when the monitoring and measuring shall be performed;
• when the results from monitoring and measurement shall be analysed and evaluated.
• How the aquatic facility will evaluate the performance and the effectiveness of systems, policies and procedures which support child safety

As a starting point, it is suggested that the aquatic facility should review:

• any legislative or best practice directives or advice provided by governments or peak bodies
• all procedures and policies relating to child safety
• patron and staff feedback
• information that has been obtained from complaints and reporting
• insights and learnings applied to the enhancing of the organisational policies and procedures
• Where complaints, concerns, safety incidents or significant breaches of policy such as the code of conduct are examined to understand what caused the problem and where there are any flaws in the organisation's policies, procedures and practices that contributed to the problem - The aquatic facility should retain appropriate documented information as evidence of the review.

Systems, policies and procedures should be updated where any gaps or opportunities are identified.

Where flaws or failings in management systems are identified, improvements should are made to prevent the problem from happening again

All policies and procedures have a regular review period indicated in the document

A reports about findings and actions taken in response to reviews of the organisation’s child safe practices are recommended to be communicated with staff, volunteers, children and families, so that stakeholders know and understand the organisation’s commitment to child safety is continually improving.

Reviews should ideally take place every 12 months, or as otherwise prompted by complaints, findings from investigations, breaches or other developments or learnings which warrant consideration to changes.

Auditing

The owner or operator of an aquatic facility should undertake an audit or assessment to ensure that the policies, procedures and systems which support safeguarding children and young people conform to legislation, industry standards and these guidelines and are monitored, reviewed and appropriately reported.

For more information on the audit process, see ISO 19011 for guidance.

Assessments can be through the form of an external or internal audit, although it is recommended that the assessor is:

• Qualified to undertake audits in line with the Guidelines for Safe Pool Operations – National Policy
• Sufficiently independent to ensure objectivity and the impartiality of the audit process

References

• National Principles for Child Safe Organisations (2018) Child Safe Organisations National Principles
• Short Guide to the Child Safe Standards, Commission for Children and Young People (Victoria)